“Why, blessings on me!” exclaimed Mrs. Saltren, on her return to the lodgings in Bloomsbury. “Whoever expected the pleasure! And—I am sorry that you should see us here, Captain Tubb; not settled into our West-End house. Me and my son are looking about for a suitable residence, genteel and commodious, and with a W. to the address; but there is that run on the West End, and it is almost impossible, without interest, to get a house. My brother, however, who is like to be an M.P., is using his influence. But, captain, you see that every house won’t suit me; I’m not going to be in the shade any more. Well, it is a pleasure to see an Orleigh face here; and, pray, what has brought you to town, Captain Tubb?” The visitor was in a black suit, that obtained for his son’s funeral; he held his hat in one hand, with a broad black cloth band about it. With his disengaged hand he thrust up his beard and nibbled the ends. Ladies play with their fans, coquette with them, talk with them, angle with them; and an uninitiated person looking on wonders what is the meaning of the many movements made with the fan—the unfurling, the snapping, the half-opening. Perhaps Captain Tubb may have been coquetting, talking with his hat, for he turned it about, then looked into it, then smoothed it where it was ruffled, then put it under his chair, then took it up and balanced it on his knee. I cannot tell. If he was not speaking with his hat, what else could he have meant by all the movements he went through with it? “Well, ma’am,” said the captain; “seeing as how I was in London, I thought I’d come and inquire how you was getting along. How are you? And how is Mr. Jingles?” “I, myself, am but middling,” answered Mrs. Saltren, with stateliness. “My son—Mr. Giles Inglett Saltren—is very well indeed. I have gone through a great deal of trouble, and that takes it out of one,” said Mrs. Saltren, “like spirits of nitre.” “So it do, ma’am. There is a vale of misery; but the sale of Chillacot was an elevation in the same; and bank-notes are of that spongy nature that they sop up a lot o’ tears. How, if I may make so bold as to ask, is your son thinking of investing the money? You see, ma’am, poor Captain Saltren and I knowed each other that intimate, our lines o’ business running alongside of each other, that we was always a-hailing of each other. And now that he’s gone, it seems natural for me to come and consult with his relict.” “You’re flattering, Mr. Tubb. I must say, it is a pity my poor Stephen did not oftener consult me. If he had—but there, I won’t say what I might. About Chillacot, he was that pig-headed that—but no, not another word. I’ve always heard say that the wife is the better half. What a mercy it is, and how it proves the wisdom of Providence, that the wusser half was took away first.” “You don’t know, Mrs. Saltren, how dreadful you’re missed in Orleigh; the place don’t seem the same without you. And folks say such spiteful things too.” “As what, captain?”